Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - #7 Kansas Jayhawks Basketball in Need of a Win at #15 Baylor Bears + Could Kevin McCullar Return?

Episode Date: March 1, 2024

Preview of #7 Kansas Jayhawks men's basketball at #15 Baylor Bears in Waco, TX with just three Big 12 Conference games remaining. Could Kevin McCullar return for KU? Top storylines for Bill Self vs Scott Drew. BU scouting report, matchups of the game, players to watch and Hawks to Soar including Yves Missi, Hunter Dickinson, Dajuan Harris, KJ Adams, Johnny Furphy, Nick Timberlake, RayJ Dennis, JaKobe Walter, Jalen Bridges and more.Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!LinkedIn These days every new potential hire can feel like a high stakes wager for your small business. That’s why LinkedIn Jobs helps find the right people for your team, faster and for free. Post your job for free at LinkedIn.com/lockedoncollege. Terms and conditions apply.GametimeDownload the Gametime app, create an account, and use code LOCKEDON for $20 off your first purchase.FanDuelNew customers, join today and you’ll getONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY DOLLARS in BONUS BETS if your first bet of FIVE DOLLARS or more wins. Visit FanDuel.com/LOCKEDON to get started. eBay MotorsWith all the parts you need at the prices you want, it’s easy to turn your car into the MVP and bring home that win. Keep your ride-or-die alive at EbayMotors.com. Eligible items only. Exclusions apply. eBay Guaranteed Fit only available to US customers.FANDUEL DISCLAIMER: 21+ in select states. First online real money wager only. Bonus issued as nonwithdrawable free bets that expires in 14 days. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit FanDuel.com/RG (CO, IA, MD, MI, NJ, PA, IL, VA, WV), 1-800-NEXT-STEP or text NEXTSTEP to 53342 (AZ), 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat (CT), 1-800-9-WITH-IT (IN), 1-800-522-4700 (WY, KS) or visit ksgamblinghelp.com (KS), 1-877-770-STOP (LA), 1-877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY (467369) (NY), TN REDLINE 1-800-889-9789 (TN)

On today's Locked On Jayhawks, KU is in desperate need of a win. Can they get it? We preview their game in Waco in a top 15 showdown against the Baylor Bears. You are Locked On Jayhawks, your daily podcast on the Kansas Jayhawks, part of the Locked On Podcast Network, your team every day. I'm Derek Johnson. Give me a follow at DJohnsonRadio on Twitter or X as they call it. Thanks for making Locked on Jayhawks your first lesson every day. We are free and available anywhere you get your podcast,

including on our YouTube page where you can like and subscribe to the show. On today's edition of the show, we're going to be talking Kansas Baylor top 15 showdown in Waco, previewing the game, top storylines. Kevin McCuller, could he be back for the game? We'll get to our Baylor scouting report, matchups of the game, Hawks to Soar, and plenty more on LOJ. First, this episode of the show is brought to you by Nissan. Take the Nissan Rogue, Nissan Pathfinder, or Nissan Armada

and go find your next big adventure. Shop NissanUSA.com. Kansas Baylor happening in Waco on Saturday. Top storylines coming into the matchup. Well, I think the first is the biggest update with possibly Kevin McCuller. We literally just had an episode the other day talking about Kevin and that reading into some of Bill Self's comments didn't sound too good on Kevin McCuller. We literally just had an episode the other day talking about Kevin and that reading into some of Bill Self's comments didn't sound too good on Kevin McCuller, but also we kind of said, you know, based on the comments that Bill Self gave about you can't bring him back just in the

NCAA tournament, he'd be too rusty, and also looking at how crappy it'd be to come back for a player off injury in a Big 12 tournament, which you could be playing three games in three days or four games in four days. We looked to the Houston game as the one where it was like, OK, Kevin McCuller needs to be back by here then. Well, he might be able to go this Saturday against Baylor because Bill Self at his press conference on Thursday said, quote, I think he's doing better. He's gaining on it. He said there's a chance that McCuller could play this

weekend if he can practice fully today and tomorrow which I don't know if that ended up happening but regardless that is great news because even if he can't go Saturday that does make you feel like he's trending in the right direction to come back at some point this season again even if it's not just this Saturday also Kansas is coming off a loss against BYU, and they are trending toward right now. Now, maybe this is unfair because the league is so incredibly difficult and Kansas has played a difficult schedule to add to it, right? And to be clear, if Kansas plays Iowa State's schedule

or Houston's schedule, do they have a better record than they are now? Yeah, maybe by like a game or something, but they've lost enough gimme games that you can't complain about that as why they didn't win the big 12. You can say that, okay, they did get a tough schedule in a year where they weren't as good as some other Kansas teams. And I'm all open for that. And that certainly is true with who they've had to play and some of the other schools who haven't had to have return trips or play some of the other ones. But anyway, when I say this, Bill Self has not had a worse conference record at Kansas than 12-6, okay, in terms of winning percentage. And that's happened, I think, a couple times for KU. Kansas is sitting at a point where if they win out, they get to that point.

Meaning if you go 2-1, this would be the worst winning percentage in big 12 play for bill self at kansas part of that speaks to how incredible he has been as a coach and how spoiled ku fans have been under him but it also would be the worst conference winning percentage since his days at oral roberts so that even precedes his time at tulsa illinois and kansas for all these years um which makes this very odd now now that you have kevin back maybe a different team, we'll see how it goes on Saturday, but certainly you can use that bounce back win. You know, some great matchups over the year too, between Kansas and Baylor. This has really turned this into kind of a fun series. Obviously Houston joined in in the Big 12 and looks like they're

going to win the league in year one. And we'll see the sustainability of the program. I don't mean that they won't be good next year. They'll probably be really good next year and the next couple years. But when Kelvin Sampson retires, I mean, and I don't know when that could happen. He's an older coach. What if Kelvin Sampson retires in four or five years? I know there's talk they could just promote his son, and maybe he keeps it rolling. But maybe they fall off. I don't know.

Regardless, up until Houston kind of came into the Big 12, you know, the early years of Bill Self at Kansas, it was Kansas and Texas. There were some years kind of in between where it was like Kansas and OU. There were some years where it felt like Iowa State. I don't know. They were more of the team that could like beat Kansas, but they would lose some of these other games. But like they were in contention,

the Bob Huggins, West Virginia teams. But one of the constants kind of throughout who's always been in those top fives year in, year out, and then really over the last, I don't know, five, six, seven, eight years has been Baylor in terms of the league. Obviously, they win the title a couple of years ago, and that kind of raids the prestige, I think, of this matchup between the two schools. And so that certainly adds to it. And I've talked about before that I'm not a big Scott Drew guy, because I have heard from recruiting people who are pretty plugged in that there is not like a bigger negative recruiter than Scott Drew that I kind of view it to be a little bit two-face in that way that he seems like this really nice guy and everything.

And maybe he is, but I don't know. That feels a little bit weird to me. So anyway, I do think there is some, I don't know, bad blood wouldn't be the right word, but I don't think that Bill Self and Scott Drew, when all the Big 12 coaches are getting together, you know, at a banquet or something, I don't think Bill Self and Scott Drew are sitting at the same table, chumming it up and laughing. Maybe, I don't know.

But either way, it's been a fun series as well. There've been so many great players with both programs and they've both been really excellent programs, which has made this really fun. Baylor's cool new home court is a storyline coming into this one. It's smaller than the previous one was, but it's more intimate. And I love that in college basketball, right? You're better off, and just college sports in general, you're better off filling up the stadium and making it loud in an intimate environment

than overdoing it. And I think it's cool for Baylor. They've had some really good home court environment games, although the home record wouldn't totally show it for them this year. They've been spurned a bit in overtime so far. Unfortunately, the side effect, and here's another storyline here, is this is the worst TV angle in the Big 12. And dare I say, I don't know. I haven't watched nearly every college in the country, so I don't know. But I'm just going to say it for the fun of it. The worst TV angle in all of college basketball. It is like you were sitting up in the nosebleeds. It looks like because of the angle, you'll see shots that are like,

okay, that's a layup that went in. It just like bricks away. Horrible TV angle. I like the new stadium. Can we not fix the cameras here? Also, this is a key game for Big 12 double buy. It looks like Houston is going to win the Big 12. If not them, then Iowa State would probably be the other school that can maybe get a share

of it at this point in time. But both these teams are tied for the three seed at this point. And if you get a top four seed, you get the double buy. So important to avoiding having to play four games in four days. Now, hypothetically, you could lose your first, second game, and then it doesn't matter whether you were going to have to play four games in four days or three in three days because you didn't make it that far anyway. But you'd like the possibility to win the big 12 championship without having to overtax yourself especially for in the sake of kansas a very thin

team who has some injuries that would be pretty problematic um so trying to get that double buy and give you a longer time off is going to be important for both these teams because there is a huddle of teams right behind them that you know whoever loses this game could easily fall to the five seed or the six seed based on how some of the tiebreakers go Baylor scouting report they're 20 and 8 on the season 9 and 6 in big 12 play since losing at KU and Allen Fieldhouse they beat Oklahoma by 17 West Virginia by 13 away lost at BYU by 7 lost to Houston in overtime and then they defeated TCU by eight on the road earlier this week 62 to 54 so really good defensive outing for a team who typically is more about the offense this year what happened in round one between these two teams Kansas got up early

but they let Baylor back in then they almost collapsed down the stretch Nick Timberlake had the turnover they missed a couple switches that led to open threes, but Baylor couldn't connect. Neither team did shoot it well from three in that first game. Both shot it well from two. Kansas got absolutely worked on the glass, but had 13 less turnovers and 12 more steals, and that's kind of what won them the game. DeJuan Harris had 14 points. Furphy was actually 0 for 6 from three, so coming off a game like that, 0 for 5 from three against BYU, you hope he bounces back in this one. KJ Adams at 13, Hunter Dickinson at 15, Nick Timberlake at 8. He actually looked really good until the last final minute of the game, which was almost a

disaster. Kevin McCuller was out in that game too for Kansas, and you did find a way to win. As for Baylor, they only had two double-digit scores. Jacoby Walter, really good. He had 17. Yves Misi was phenomenal. 21 points, eight rebounds. He was able to use his athleticism to kind of just run by and run rampant on Hunter Dickinson. But they held Ray J. Dennis, which a lot of credit to Dwan Harris here, to just three points.

So what they do well, this is a top-five offense in the country in Baylor. They're the number-one Big 12 offense in Big 12-only games. They're over 40% from three on the year, which is down to 35% from three in Big 12 games. But they're still top five in twos and threes in conference games, which leads them to be the number two effective field goal percentage offense. They even collect misses at a very high rate. They get a top 25 offensive rebound rate. So you make a lot of shots, and then when you miss them, you get the rebound. That's a pretty good recipe to be an elite offense.

They also get to the free throw line a ton, actually the best clip in Big 12 only games. So they get to the free throw line. They shoot the ball well. They shoot it at the free throw line. Obviously, this is just an elite overall offense. It's not a great defense. I will say, though, there are certain things they do at least average to well on defense.

Defensive rebounding, not fouling. They've been okay to solid at both those things. What they don't do well, though, they do turn it over too much offensively. That's been kind of the one bugaboo for the offense. Rank outside the top 200 and near the 250 range for getting the ball stolen from them. So that was apparent in the last time these two met. They had 21 turnovers.

That's why Kansas won the game by three, right? The defense has not been great for Baylor this year. They're outside the top 50 nationally. They're ranked ninth in Big 12 only games, and they are not in the top 200 for two-point defense nationally. They also rank bottom three in conference games there and with block rate. And they've been bottom four in three-point defense in Big 12 games. They just don't really do anything that's like great or elite.

They're not top 100 in any key defensive stat category on Ken Palm. So it's just not like a great defense. But they can outscore teams. Although, again, oddly enough, they beat TCU in a low a low scoring game. So maybe that's starting to turn the corner for them. A reminder of the personnel litany of guards, Ray J Dennis, 13.6 assists, 37% from three freshmen, Jacoby Walter, 15 a game, take shots from all over the place. Efficiency, not super great, 33% from three, but he can hit tough shots. Jaden Nunn, 10.6 points for him, 45% from three. Langston Love hasn't played since the game before they were going to play Kansas.

Got hurt in the BYU game, and he hasn't played since. I don't know if he'll be back this weekend. If he does, he's at 11 a game on over 50% from three in conference play. But his injury has allowed Miro Little to get a bit more playing time, a young, talented freshman who shot it well on limited volume. Then you've got 6'9 Jalen Bridges on the wing, really efficient player, 11 points, 5 rebounds, 46-41, 84 shooting splits. And at center, it's kind of a two-headed monster.

The backup is Josh Ojiununwa, Wuna, I'm definitely mispronouncing that, 4.8 points, 3.3 rebounds, 72% more of a limited shooter. And then Yves Misi, who we saw go off in Allen Fieldhouse. He averages 11 points, 5.6 rebounds on 64% from the floor. All right, let's continue on with our matchups of the game. Player matchups and Hawks the Soar on this episode of Locked on Jayhawks. First, we are brought to you by Nissan. Are you the kind of driver that likes to push things a little further?

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Shop NissanUSA.com. On to our matchups of the game for Kansas and Baylor, make sure you subscribe to the show. Thank you to the everydayers tuning in to each and every episode. Number one, Kansas taking care of the basketball. Baylor hasn't been great at, I don't know, not turning the ball over offensively, but they also haven't been great at forcing turnovers or getting a bunch of steals. Now, I will say compared to some of their other defensive

attributes, they're okay at it, but still, this is not like a national strength necessarily. And we saw the lack of impact or the impact of a lack of turnovers, I should say, for Kansas when that game was in Lawrence. 21-8, you win the turnover battle. You had 12 more steals than them in a game where you didn't shoot well from three. You missed shots around the rim. Yves Misi went off. I guess you did well defending their threes in that one, but you almost collapsed late. You didn't have Kevin McCuller. You won the game because of the turnover differential. And so for Baylor, here are their seven lowest turnover rate defense games they've had this season. Basically meaning the games where their defense has forced the lowest or the worst

or the least amount of turnover rate this season. Houston, loss. At BYU, loss. At Texas, loss. At Kansas, loss. Neutral court with Duke, loss. Versus Nichols State, win. That's a team ranked outside the top 250. And versus TCU, loss. Find a correlation there? So Kansas on the season turns the ball over 16.5% of the time. In games where the Baylor defense has forced a turnover rate of 16.5% or worse. They're five and six. And three of those

five wins came to non-conference teams who are currently ranked outside the Ken Palm top 100. So in like real games, you know, the record is even worse. Basically what that means, if Kansas can just be like season normal here, just season average here. You give yourself a real good chance of winning on the road. That said, playing on the road makes these things a little bit tougher. Number two, establishing the interior. Kansas is pretty one-dimensional on offense, especially if Kevin McCuller can't go. Now, maybe Kevin McCuller can go. Even then, this is not a great three-point shooting team.

They don't have a ton of options. Who can get a bucket off the dribble? Who can hit a jump shot? Now, Kevin can do that a little bit more than some other guys on the team. Even then, though, he's not, you know, I don't know, he's not Ochagbaje at it, I guess, necessarily, although Ochag was, you know, not as much maybe off the dribble, but still. Yes, Kansas can do some good things at times in transition or like at times when Furphy and or Timberlake is hot, but for the most part, they're kind of an inside scoring team. And then if you have Kevin McCuller, you definitely do add to some of those other things. But the good news is Kansas is really

strong at that one trick. They're 15 and two this season too, when they shoot above 50% on two point shots versus being just six-5 when they don't. Kansas ranks in the 92nd percentile in at-the-rim frequency, meaning they get a lot of shots at the rim, and they're 97th percentile in at-the-rim field goal percentage, meaning they're converting them at a very high rate. That was according to CBB Analytics. Thing is for Baylor, they've done an excellent job preventing teams

from even getting shots off at the rim. They rank in the 97th percentile on the season in defense, preventing such frequency of shots at the rim. And for what it's worth in game one, that was kind of apparent. Kansas was just 10 of 18 at the rim. That's just below 56%, which is well below their average, which is in the high 60s on the season. If I do remember that game right, though, Kansas missed a lot of bunnies on the inside. There were some missed layups. There were some missed shots that normally go down for Hunter Dickinson.

I think he was like one of eight in the second half. So there is a part of me that thinks, okay, they should be set up, you know, just reversion a little bit to shoot a little bit better at the rim in this game. But you have to be able to establish that because, you know, Kansas is not a team who's going to fire up a bunch of threes and hit a bunch of threes I don't know maybe Kevin comes back and maybe it leads to an energy boost and maybe Timberlake and Furphy after the last game where they couldn't hit anything again the word reversion comes to play and they combine to go you know six of nine from three-point range and this becomes less prevalent but certainly for a team that is so reliant on that,

you have to do it well if that is your biggest strength. Number three is ball screen defense. Baylor kills you with ball screens. They have that litany of guards, all of which who can basically get their own shot off the dribble, who are quick, who can shoot it off ball. And then they have rim runners at the center position. It's not as much although

Meecy did a little bit of everything in the last game with uh that they played Kansas but he more excels and and this has kind of been the Baylor big men uh for a while now under Scott Drew which is perfect for what you need when you have you know these dynamic guards that they seem to have year in year out is guys who can set good screens, guys who can roll to the basket, guys who can catch in traffic, and guys who can finish off the pick and roll, whether that's a layup, whether that's throwing down a dunk, running hard to the rim after setting a hard screen, running transition well. These are things that the Baylor bigs do well. And so when I say defending ball screens, it's not just about defending the guards. It's about defending the

big men too. For what it's worth, Kansas did do well in this category in the first time these two teams met, but Kansas did not do well at it earlier this week in BYU and lost the game. So when you look at it, Baylor takes a bunch of threes. They don't take a ton of shots inside or at the rim, but when they do, they usually are dunks or layups. They're taking them because they're easy open shots. They're 71% at the rim this season, which is in the 99th percentile per CBB analytics. So again, they're not going to do it like a bunch. They're not going to just completely dominate the game by doing that over and over again. But it's always one of those things where it's like they have the counter that if you overemphasize guarding the ball screen for the

three-point shooter, they will spurn you on the inside. So you'd have to be complete in how you guard the ball screens. They're also in the 99th percentile in corner three-point percentage and above the break three frequency. All of those are things that come off of a lot of ball screens and pick and rolls where you have an action with a guard and the big man setting the screen. Those two run a pick and roll or whatever it ends up being, and then you have a corner shooter getting ready as the kind of third option there. Kansas defense has to be alert. You've got to execute switches. You've got to play team defense.

You can't cheat off a guy in the corner who's the third option off that pick and roll, and you've got to still slow down the roll man with Meecy, who went off in Allenfield House. That brings us to our player matchup. We're going to go right there. Eves Meecy against Hunter Dickinson. Hunter Dickinson, if Kevin McCullers out again, I think he, you know, takes the badge as being KU's best player. If Kevin's back even then, you know, first game coming back off injury, which by the way, Remy Martin came back in the game in Waco at the end of February a couple years ago, so maybe history would repeat itself there, though Kansas lost that game.

But, yeah, Meecy kind of won that matchup. I mean, in fact, he did. Dickinson struggled in the second half, and Meecy had one of his better games of the season since had a really tough game against Houston. But that'll be a very imperative matchup in this one, and for Baylor, if they win that center battle again, that makes it really tough for Kansas to win on the road when you feel like they have the advantage of the scoring guards on the outside. The other

player matchup here, just a quick one, Kevin McCullough against his knee. Can he play? If he does, will he be at a hundred percent? Because even if he does play, but he's at 70%, you know, what's that worth? Because we saw him playing through the injury in some games like the Kansas State game, like the Iowa State game, and go look back at his field goal percentage. Go look back at the lack of efficiency that he had. I think you could easily correlate the two and say, yeah, it's not just that the injury has kept Kevin Kohler from playing in some games.

It's that the games he has played in, it's had a negative impact on his performance. So how will that possibly impact? Or if he does play, would that be a sign that he is 100%? I don't know. I guess we'll wait and see. All right, let's finish up. Hawks, the sore KU players we think can have big games on this episode of Locked on Jayhawks. First, we're brought to you by FanDuel Sportsbook. Get buckets with your first bet on FanDuel America's number one sportsbook because right now new customers get $150 in bonus bets with any winning $5 bet that's 150 bucks if your bet wins bet on all your favorite NBA players and teams

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Kansas is going to be an underdog in this game, probably could pick up two, three, four, five points in a game like this. Maybe it's a spot that you like Kansas on the road, or maybe you're just going the other way and you're like, no, I'm going to make some money betting against Kansas. Whatever you want to do, your money, just do it responsibly. Just visit fanduel.com slash locked on and shoot your shot. FanDuel, official sportsbook partner of the NBA

and the Locked On Podcast Network. Finishing up with Hawks to soar KU players. We think you can have big games on this episode of Locked on Jayhawks. By the way, I'm going to be out of town this weekend. So I don't know if I'll have a recap episode posted for this KU Baylor game, at least till next Monday, or I don't know if I'll even have one up by then, but we'll try to be back at the very latest. If we don't get a recap episode up for KU's K-State matchup and have a preview up for that one. So just an FYI,

if you're like, hey, why is this not up? That would be why. Okay, Hawks to Soar, KJ Adams. Baylor's been content giving up mid-range twos and floaters. That's right in the wheelhouse for KJ Adams, who had 13 points in the last matchup between these two teams. K.J. struggled a bit last game against BYU. It's 5-13 from the floor. And he's someone who I always look at and I'm like, yeah, if you have a tough performance, you just have this great energy about you and, I don't know, toughness and how hard you work that I feel like you're going to be primed to bounce back.

So that's what I'm going to assume here. Plus, how many times have we seen on the road KJ throw down a big dunk and it kind of helps? Not really much, I guess, as much this year. Maybe I'm thinking more about last year because KU hasn't really had as many of those opportunities this year. The other one, if he is back, Kevin McCuller, I think actually is set up to have a nice game

because Baylor gives up a lot of above-the-break threes. Kevin leads Kansas in above-the the break three attempts per game. And they also give up a lot of mid range, at least second on the team in mid range shots per game, just 200 Dickinson. Unfortunately, he hasn't shot either like great above the break threes for him or 33%. So that's like, you know, average. That's fine. A mid range hasn't been great for him. It's still above like the national average though. So he's been fine at it. But it's not just the volume of the shots there. It's when you look at Baylor, they're playing, you know,

two guard, three guard lineups, right? And we've seen Bill Self a couple times a game when Kevin's in there, throw that wing post-up play where Kevin McCuller posts up a guard and use Hunter Dickinson at the three point line to raise the line there and basically allow you to have a two, three inch, four inch height advantage with Kevin on a smaller guard. I think you take advantage of that maybe in a couple of times this game,

if he is healthy, but again, big F on what's going to happen there. All right. That'll do it for this episode of locked on Jayhawks. We'll be back at some point next week, whether it's a recap or the KUK state preview. Again,

I'll be out of town this weekend, but catch our show anywhere. You get your podcasts, including on our YouTube page. We'll see you next time with LOJ.